Help a Reporter Out is gone. If you searched for HARO expecting to sign up and start pitching journalists, you hit a dead end, and you are not alone. The service that built an entire link-building playbook shut down, its replacement shut down too, and the people who used it scattered across half a dozen new platforms.
What replaced HARO? No single tool did. The journalists and expert sources who lived on HARO moved to Qwoted, Featured.com, Help a B2B Writer, SourceBottle, and direct source requests on social media. Each covers a slightly different slice of what HARO used to do. Below is the full story of what happened, the platforms that took its place, and how to actually earn press coverage and links in 2026.
What was Help a Reporter Out (HARO)?
HARO stood for “Help a Reporter Out.” It was a free service that connected journalists with expert sources. The mechanics were simple and it ran that way for years.
Three times a day, on weekdays, HARO emailed a digest of journalist requests to a huge list of subscribers. A reporter writing about, say, small-business cybersecurity would submit a query. HARO bundled it with dozens of others and sent it out. Sources scanned the list, found queries they could speak to, and pitched a short expert response back to the journalist. If the reporter used your quote, you often got a mention and a link from the publication.
For SEO and PR people, that link was the prize. A quote in a real article on a real news site is an editorial link, the kind earned on merit rather than bought or traded. That is why “HARO link building” became its own category, with agencies, courses, and tools built entirely around working those daily emails.
HARO was owned by Cision, a large PR and media-intelligence company. The free product sat alongside Cision’s paid media database, which is worth remembering, because it explains a lot about what happened next.
What happened to HARO? The full timeline
Here is the short version: Cision rebranded HARO, the rebrand failed, and the whole thing closed inside of a year.
2024: Cision retires the HARO brand
In 2024, Cision announced it was sunsetting the Help a Reporter Out name. HARO would be folded into a new platform called Connectively. The pitch was that Connectively would be a modern upgrade, with a proper web app, AI-assisted matching, and features beyond the plain email digest.
In practice, the change unsettled the user base. The email cadence people relied on shifted. New limits and paid tiers appeared. The simple free tool that made HARO popular got more complicated, and a lot of long-time sources drifted away or started testing other platforms.
December 9, 2024: Connectively shuts down
Connectively did not last. Cision closed the platform completely, effective December 9, 2024. Less than a year after the rebrand, the service that carried two decades of HARO history was switched off. Users were pointed toward Cision’s paid products, and the free journalist queries that defined HARO ended for good.
So when people ask “what happened to Connectively,” the answer is the same as “what happened to HARO.” They were the same product under two names, and both are gone.
Where the journalists and sources went
Reporters still need expert sources, and sources still want coverage. That demand did not disappear when the platform did. It just fragmented. Journalists moved their requests to newer query services and to social media. Sources followed. The result is the messier, multi-platform landscape we have in 2026, where no single inbox catches everything.
What replaced HARO in 2026?
There is no one-to-one HARO replacement. Instead there is a handful of platforms that each own part of the old audience. Here is how the main options compare, followed by a closer look at each.
| Platform | Best for | Cost | Style |
|---|---|---|---|
| Qwoted | PR pros, B2B, finance, tech | Free tier + paid | Query feed + media database |
| Featured.com | Founders, execs, thought leadership | Free tier + paid | Q&A that publishes into articles |
| Help a B2B Writer | SaaS, marketing, B2B | Free | Email queries, B2B only |
| SourceBottle | Lifestyle, small biz, wellness | Free | Email queries, strong in AU/UK |
| Social source requests | Everyone, opportunistic | Free | Real-time posts from journalists |
Qwoted
Qwoted is the closest thing to an all-purpose HARO successor. It works as a two-sided platform: journalists post what they are working on, and sources browse a feed of live requests and pitch the ones that fit. It also carries a media database, so it functions as an outreach tool as well as a query service.
Qwoted skews toward business, finance, technology, and professional PR. If you are a founder, a marketer, or an in-house comms person in those spaces, this is usually the first platform to set up. There is a free tier for sources with a capped number of pitches, plus paid plans that raise your limits and add features.
Featured.com
Featured.com (formerly Terkel) works differently from a classic query feed. Journalists and content teams post questions, experts write short answers, and the best answers get published inside articles and expert roundups, often with a link and attribution back to the contributor.
It rewards people who can write a genuinely useful, specific answer rather than a generic soundbite. That makes it a strong fit for founders and executives building a body of quotable thought leadership over time. There is a free plan with limited submissions and paid plans for higher volume and better placement.
Help a B2B Writer
Help a B2B Writer is the free, focused option. Run by the team behind Superpath, it emails out source requests specifically from B2B writers and content marketers. If your world is SaaS, marketing, sales, HR tech, or anything sold business-to-business, the signal-to-noise here is excellent because every query is already on-topic for you.
It is free, which makes it an easy addition to any stack. The trade-off is scope: it is B2B by design, so consumer and lifestyle brands will find little to pitch.
SourceBottle
SourceBottle predates the HARO collapse and quietly picked up displaced users. It emails call-outs from journalists and bloggers and is especially active in Australia and the United Kingdom. Its sweet spot is lifestyle, health and wellness, parenting, small business, and consumer topics, the areas where HARO’s B2B-heavy successors are thin.
It is free for sources. If your brand is consumer-facing or you want coverage outside the US business press, it belongs in your rotation.
Social media source requests
A meaningful chunk of the old HARO activity moved onto social platforms. Journalists now post what they are working on directly, often tagged so sources can find them. On X and on Bluesky, the #JournoRequest and #PRRequest hashtags surface live call-outs. LinkedIn carries similar posts, especially in B2B niches.
This channel is unstructured and you have to hunt for it, but it is fast and free, and pitching a journalist where they already are can beat waiting for a query digest. Set up saved searches and check them daily.
Beyond these, regional and paid services fill gaps. ResponseSource is a long-running paid option in the UK. Various niche newsletters and Slack communities run their own source requests. The pattern is clear: the single firehose became many smaller streams.
How to do HARO-style link building today
The tools changed. The method did not. Earning a press link still comes down to being a fast, relevant, credible source. Here is the process that works across every platform above.
1. Pick two or three platforms, not all of them. Match the tools to your niche. A B2B SaaS founder might run Qwoted, Featured.com, and Help a B2B Writer. A consumer wellness brand might run Qwoted, SourceBottle, and social requests. Spreading across everything just buries you.
2. Set up alerts and check them daily. Speed wins. Journalists work on deadline and often use the first few strong responses they get. If you check queries once a week, you have already lost. Filter for the topics you can actually speak to with authority.
3. Pitch tight, specific, and human. A good response is three short paragraphs: a direct answer to the exact question, a concrete detail or number that proves you know the subject, and one line on who you are and why you can speak to it. No fluff, no attachments, no sales pitch. Give the reporter something they can paste straight into the piece.
4. Only pitch what is true. Journalists remember sources who waste their time or overstate credentials. A wrong claim can cost you a relationship and, occasionally, a correction. Speak to what you genuinely know.
5. Track your wins and follow up. When a piece runs, confirm the link is live and correct. Thank the journalist. Reporters keep a mental list of reliable sources, and getting on that list is worth more than any single placement.
Do that consistently and the links come. Not every pitch lands. Realistically, most do not, and that is normal even for people who do this full time. The math works because you send many good pitches and a steady fraction convert into coverage on real publications.
DIY vs done-for-you: which makes sense?
You can run all of this yourself. The platforms are cheap or free, and nothing here requires special access. The real cost is time and attention.
Doing it yourself makes sense when you have a subject-matter expert who enjoys writing, can respond within an hour or two, and can protect a daily slot for it. Founders who are naturally quotable often do well, because the credibility and the voice are already there.
A done-for-you service makes sense when the bottleneck is time or consistency. Monitoring five platforms every day, drafting sharp pitches under deadline, and keeping it up for months is a real job. That is the part most people quietly drop after a few weeks. An agency runs the monitoring, drafts pitches in your voice for approval, and keeps the volume steady so the wins accumulate instead of stalling. The trade-off is cost, and you should expect honest talk about success rates rather than guarantees of a specific number of links.
If you want that handled, our digital PR and HARO-style link building service runs the modern successor platforms for you, pitches on your behalf, and reports on the links you actually earn. If you would rather just talk it through first, get in touch and we will tell you honestly whether DIY or done-for-you fits your situation.
Either way, the headline is the same: HARO the brand is dead, but the way it worked, real experts earning real links by helping real journalists, is alive and working in 2026. You just have to know where the journalists went.
Frequently asked questions
What replaced HARO? No single tool replaced it. Journalists and sources spread across Qwoted, Featured.com, Help a B2B Writer, SourceBottle, and social media source requests. Qwoted is the closest all-purpose successor; Featured.com suits founders building thought leadership; Help a B2B Writer is the free B2B pick.
Is Help a Reporter Out still running? No. Cision retired the Help a Reporter Out brand in 2024 and folded it into Connectively, which then shut down entirely on December 9, 2024. The old queries no longer go out.
What happened to Connectively? Connectively was the rebranded version of HARO that Cision launched in 2024. It lasted less than a year and closed on December 9, 2024, with users pointed toward Cision’s paid products.
Are HARO-style links still good for SEO? Yes, when earned editorially. A journalist quoting you and linking to your site is the kind of editorial link Google’s guidelines treat as legitimate. The value comes from real relevance and a real publication, not from the HARO brand.
Which HARO alternative is free? Help a B2B Writer and SourceBottle are free for sources. Qwoted and Featured.com offer free tiers with limits plus paid plans. You can run a credible campaign without paying for any single tool.